Tuesday, 5 June 2018

Memories of John Julius Norwich in Venice, Byzantium and at the Wexford Festival Opera

With John Julius Norwich at the Wexford Festival Opera in 2016

Patrick Comerford

I was sorry to read last night in the Guardian that the great scholar of Byzantium and Venice, John Julius Norwich, died last Friday [1 June 2018].

John Julius Norwich (John Julius Cooper, 2nd Viscount Norwich) is one of the most distinguished and charismatic writers and broadcasters of our time and is best-known for his works on the Byzantine empire, mediaeval Sicily and Venice. He produced 30 historical documentaries for BBC television.

One of his recent books is In The Great Cities in Europe, which I bought in Cambridge the year before last. This book, which he edited, paints a portrait of world civilisation by telling the stories of the world’s greatest cities from ancient times to the present. His portraits of cities in this book are vignettes about Constantinople, Palermo and Venice

A few weeks after reading this book, I was back in Wexford to hear John Julius Norwich deliver the 2016 Dr Tom Walsh Lecture as part of the Wexford Festival Opera [28 October 2016].

In an interview-style presentation on the stage at the Clayton White Hotel, that morning, he spoke fondly of Wexford, saying he had been there at least 50 times, coming to the opera festival for the first time in 1961. There were humorous recollections of staying with the Beits at Russborough House in Co Wicklow, and late night festival parties in the Talbot Hotel.

It was a self-deprecating hour on stage, as he tried to deny he was an original historian, saying instead he only tried to make what is already known to the general reader.

He became fascinated with Byzantium as an 18-year-old undergraduate at Oxford, and his first major work was a two-volume history of Sicily. After a career in the diplomatic service, he became a writer, particularly on history, art and travel subjects. His many books include acclaimed works on Venice, Byzantium, Mount Athos, Glyndebourne, the Normans, the Popes, Shakespeare and architecture, and his Christmas Crackers collections of trivia and witticisms.

He edited the diaries of his father, Duff Cooper, 1st Viscount Norwich, and letters from his famously glamorous mother, Lady Diana Cooper (Darling Monster: The Letters of Lady Diana Cooper to Her Son John Julius Norwich).

A distinguished and popular broadcaster on television and radio he has written and presented some 30 television documentaries on art, architecture and history, on subjects ranging from the fall of Constantinople, through Napoleon’s final 100 days’ campaign, to Haiti’s revolutionary leader Toussaint Louverture.

He chaired or served on the committees of numerous charitable projects, including projects concerned with Venice, world monuments, fine arts, the disabled, the National Trust and English National Opera. He was a regular speaker at lunches and dinners and in 2006 and 2007 he gave one-man shows in two London theatres.

He will also be remembered for his wit and erudition by listeners to the BBC radio programmes My Word! and Round Britain Quiz.

John Julius Norwich on the stage in Wexford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

John Julius Cooper, Viscount Norwich, author and broadcaster, born 15 September 1929, died 1 June 2018. The Guardian obituary is HERE.